


Fine Dining

by entanglednow



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Dead animals, Feeding, I Don't Even Know, Kink Meme, M/M, Romantic Gestures, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), romantic dinner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 11:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21319537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: In which Aziraphale would very much like to actually have dinner with Crowley. He just needs to provide a very particular menu.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 147
Kudos: 823
Collections: Crowley's Demonic Side, Good Omens Kink Meme, Snakey Bits!Crowley





	Fine Dining

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kink meme. Because I hadn't seen it this way round and it was a terrible tragedy. It's all very romantic, it is, you know it is.

Crowley eats. Aziraphale knows he does. He simply doesn't do it very often, or in public, or in front of him.

Aziraphale has been to enough of Crowley's temporary dwellings, lodgings and dubiously acquired rooms, to know they are always curiously free of vermin. He's caught the occasional yawn, while Crowley thought he was busy tending to the bookshelves, the clicking rock of a jaw extended well past what a human's would have been capable of, before being shifted sideways and back again.

Aziraphale understands, of course, that it's simply not practical for them to eat together at a restaurant. It's instinctive, Aziraphale supposes, that when Crowley puts something in his mouth it should open all the way, to drag it down. He's not really built to chew, to savour, to move food anywhere but straight down. And it's never really occurred to Aziraphale before how unfair it's been, more than unfair after all this time, all these years. Crowley has fed him, and accompanied him, and indulged him from tavern, to restaurant, to bar through the years, watching him eat, watching him try delicacy after delicacy, watching him discover spices and herbs and textures. Oh, Crowley has tasted small portions when Aziraphale insisted, such small things, unnoticed things that would slide right down without any trouble, without any special effort.

But Aziraphale finds quite suddenly that he wants them to eat together. He wants, he very much wants, to invite Crowley round for dinner and have the table set for them both. Aziraphale wants to indulge with him, to watch him eat, and drink, in the same way Crowley has always done for him. Then to talk long into the night in a way that they've always been so good at. He wants Crowley to feel comfortable doing that, to feel comfortable being everything that he is with Aziraphale. Because the alternative is suddenly unbearable.

He makes a decision, not spontaneous but definite, and determined, and calls him. Crowley answers almost immediately, the drag of his voice warm and close like he has the phone pressed to his face.

"Dinner?" Aziraphale asks, and if his nervousness comes across as an excess of enthusiasm it doesn't seem to matter.

"Sounds good," Crowley says instantly, like there was no other possible reply to Aziraphale's offer of company. "How about that new Thai place?"

Where Crowley will doubtless slide in opposite him, and drink, and drum his fingers on the table, and eat nothing at all. He'll watch Aziraphale eat, and he'll smile and go hungry, like he must have done so many times before. And Aziraphale finds that he suddenly feels so very guilty for that. He's been a bad friend for so many reasons, but this one he's more than capable of rectifying.

"I'm actually thinking something a little more..." Intimate? No, no that puts a certain amount of pressure on the whole thing. Personal? A little too vague and liable to leave Crowley suspicious. Quiet? Yes, quiet would do. "Quiet, just the two of us, at the shop."

"Quiet's good," Crowley says easily, and it sounds like reassurance. "You want me to bring wine?"

Aziraphale supposes that red would go best, for the evening's menu. Assuming all goes well, assuming Crowley doesn't refuse.

"Red would be perfect," Aziraphale tells him. "Shall I see you at seven?"

"I'll be there," Crowley says, and that sounds far more like a promise than a casual note.

There's a pause, slight but there, a space to leave other words, if he'd like to. For a moment Aziraphale wants to leave something there, something warm, something honest, something that he's never quite had the courage to expose to the world.

But he's left it too late.

He always seems to leave it too late.

Aziraphale eventually settles for simple but intimate dining. If this goes well - he hopes it goes well - then they can eat together again, perhaps make it a regular thing, they can enjoy food together. There are so many things they can do together now. So many opportunities, and Aziraphale is still determined that he will ruin none of them. Freedom is more terrifying than he could have imagined, but he thinks that's what makes it worth it.

So at seven precisely he has the table set up. It's nice, not too much nicer than usual, nothing obvious, but still nice. There are candles, there are flowers - and then there are no flowers when Aziraphale considers that perhaps is a little too much. He thinks he's managed a perfect balance between normal and a little nicer than usual. Not enough to feel important, not enough to notice and comment on. 

Though it turns out to not be quite so perfectly balanced, because Crowley stops when he spots the table, gesturing carefully with the wine he'd brought.

"What's this then?" Crowley's eyebrow is up over the top of his glasses, and there's the faintest quirk to his mouth that suggests curiosity and amusement. Aziraphale forgets sometimes how good he is at noticing things. "Did I forget something important?" He frowns afterwards, as if he genuinely might have done, but then Aziraphale gestures carefully, and there are two cloth covered plates either side of the table. Crowley looks even more curious at the new and unexpected fullness of his side.

"I took the liberty of -" Aziraphale pauses, trying to find an appropriate way to say it, or to ask, he really doesn't want to pressure him after all. "Choosing something for you. I hope you don't mind," he finishes at last.

Crowley gives the large cloth a curious look, then opens his mouth just a touch, tongue touching his lower lip.

"Ah, no cheating," Aziraphale tells him firmly, and watches that narrow mouth press shut, watches fingers reach forward and twitch the cloth upwards instead.

Aziraphale suspects he'd tried a little too hard. Dead, unprepared animals are not really designed to be displayed nicely. He'd attempted to curl the two large rats around each other, leaving the mice in the middle, almost like a filling, tail base to snout. He'd had visions of some exotic medieval dish that birds might fly out of at any moment.

There's no expression to be found once Crowley sees what's underneath, just a quiet stillness, the skin beside his eyes moves just a touch, and there's the faintest in-draw of unneeded breath. Before he pulls the cloth away completely, places it gently beside the plate.

Aziraphale attempts to look both hopeful and apologetic at the same time. He's not sure he quite manages it. It's a little unnerving that Crowley hasn't spoken yet.

"I didn't know which you preferred," he admits. "Mice are traditional, but they're quite small, and I'm afraid I don't have any idea how much you eat. The rats were much larger - I did originally intend to offer them to you live but they kept, ah, escaping, and I wasn't sure how to serve them. So I decided to acquire some of both from an - er, ethical source." The small child crying over a shoebox had been a little upsetting. But Aziraphale had made sure that they would acquire new friends to replace the old.

"You want me to eat?" Crowley asks carefully, as if he thinks Aziraphale is making terrible life choices - and not for the first time, oh not even for the hundredth time he supposes. "In front of you?" He tips his head forward and looks at him over his glasses.

"I want you to eat _with_ me," Aziraphale says quietly. He realises he's pressing his fingers together and makes himself stop. "I would like us to eat together. We've never done that, not really, and I find that I would very much like to. I would like to have dinner with you, Crowley."

Crowley goes very still, and there's the soft sound of air being exhaled, surprised, or something like it.

"Ethically sourced dead animals," Crowley mutters to himself, but he pulls the chair out slowly, and then sits down opposite Aziraphale. After a pause he drags his glasses free, folds them and puts them away.

Aziraphale exhales a breath he never needed, and can't help the huge smile that ends up on his face. He had been genuinely worried that Crowley would say no.

"You won't like it," Crowley insists, but quietly, as if he hates to crush Aziraphale's enthusiasm, shaking the napkin out. "It's disgusting, I'll have to unhinge my jaw for that." There's a nod at the artistic curl of plump dead rat on his plate. "And I can't talk while I'm eating either, it'll stretch my whole throat out."

Aziraphale knows perfectly well that Crowley's trying to get him to change his mind. But he must know just as well by now how stubborn he is once his mind is made up.

"You've watched me eat for four thousand years," Aziraphale reasons. "It's only fair."

Crowley makes a noise that's almost a word, protest, or accusation, or both.

"That's different, watching you eat is..."

Aziraphale raises an eyebrow, to encourage him to finish.

"Less disgusting," Crowley finishes after a pause. "You'll be put off your own food."

Aziraphale makes a noise that he hopes conveys that Crowley is being ridiculous.

But Crowley sits there, in a strange moment of stillness, as if he's not sure how to do this, or how to do it in front of Aziraphale. And honestly, he's not trying to force Crowley into anything. He would never want him to feel uncomfortable, he just wants him to know that he can, that Aziraphale would never judge him for this. But he's perfectly willing to let it be Crowley's decision. So he makes himself fill both of their glasses, and then lift his cutlery as if everything is completely normal. Just another meal like any other they've shared before.

When Aziraphale's knife bites into meat Crowley takes a breath, like he's steeling himself, and reaches down, sharp fingers lifting a mouse by its tail, and raising it.

Aziraphale briefly wonders if it's impolite to stare, before reminding himself that Crowley has been watching him put things in his mouth for years, and it's really only fair. He watches Crowley open, not excessively wide, but purposeful, one lever of his jaw, and then there's a small rodent slipped in between his teeth, tail curling against the weight of his tongue, before his mouth closes again and Aziraphale watches the length of Crowley's throat shift in one long, squeezing swallow.

His tips his head down afterwards, lets it rock a little on his neck, like he's shifting it down, lips parted just a touch, and he looks...pleased.

Aziraphale blinks, and it takes him a second to realise he's been trying to eat off of an empty fork. He finds something to stab with it absently.

"You warmed them," Crowley says after a moment, he sounds surprised, and strangely touched.

"Of course I did," Aziraphale offers, as if it would have been terribly rude not to.

The potatoes are buttery and exquisite, but Aziraphale is distracted by Crowley's gently prodding fingers, as if he's judging the mice by touch. The second one he seems less self-conscious about, lifting it and dropping it straight down, rather than laying it inside. His mouth snaps closed quicker, and the tail slides in before the rest moves down his throat.

Aziraphale obediently talks between them, so Crowley can reply. The wine is good, and the weather is abysmal, which takes up half Aziraphale's plate and all four of the white mice on Crowley's. He's now eyeing the rats and tapping at his wine glass. Though if the way his gaze is focused is anything to go by he wants them, he wants to eat them.

And this is somehow so much more than Aziraphale hoped for.

"It's quite alright." He finds himself saying, voice soft, and Crowley's eyes flick up to him, as if he hadn't expected that.

Crowley's fingers slide onto the plate, close on the end of a long tail and lift. The rat is plump, hindquarters swollen heavy and wide, and Aziraphale is more than a little curious - utterly fascinated if he's being honest. This all feels so very new, and personal, and strangely intimate for it. There are so few things left to discover about each other, quiet, intimate little things. And he finds himself excited, or perhaps not excited but something close, something warm and eager and _needful_ for them.

Crowley lifts it, dangles the weight of it over his face, and then his mouth opens, and then opens more, jaw edging down, mouth splitting just a little at the edges to stretch open wider. Half the rat goes in, body slid straight down, mouth stretched around the bulk of it, and Aziraphale bites down on a noise, and lets his fork hang bereft, meat spilling from it.

Aziraphale watches Crowley's throat grip into the front of the rat and pull, watches the sides of his mouth stretch, and then open again, to draw the rat further in, the back half of it crushed under the squeeze of his mouth and jaw, and the dragging pull where it moves down his throat. His mouth closes slowly around the width of it, tail sliding in as it disappears. Crowley's throat swells and stretches, and then crushes back to its original size on one final rolling swallow. Then he tips his head down again, rocks it gently from one side to the other, throat still flexing just a little.

His lifts his glass after, takes a drink and very carefully doesn't look at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale abandons his fork, and his plate, and pushes his chair back, Crowley winces at the noise.

"I told you not to watch," he says flatly. "I told you you wouldn't like it -"

He stops talking when Aziraphale curls his neatly manicured fingers around the remaining rat's long tail, and then very slowly lifts it. It's heavier than it looks, rounded and plump and mottled black and white.

"May I?" he asks quietly

Crowley makes a thin noise in his throat, and spills wine on the table. Aziraphale eyes the spreading stain, though neither of them move to fix it. He's uncertain if he's made some sort of terribly rude faux pas. He's usually much better at thinking before he speaks. But it isn't as if he's never eaten off of a fork Crowley has hefted in his direction before, some curious confection here, a new delicacy there. Things Crowley hadn't wanted, had only wanted to feed to him. Always with that warm almost smile, as if it was a pleasure.

But perhaps this is different, perhaps this isn't the same at all, too personal, too strange to share.

"I don't want to be presumptuous," he says. "I just wanted -"

"Yes," Crowley says quietly, and his voice sounds raw. "Yes, you can, if you want to."

The fact that there's hope somewhere in there with the permission is so familiar and so touching that it almost hurts.

Aziraphale raises the rat, watches it turn slowly, and Crowley swallows in his chair, head tipping back, mouth still shut, like he's waiting.

"Open your mouth," Aziraphale says, and Crowley does, slow and wide, and then wider, and from above him Aziraphale watches his throat flex open, waiting. Aziraphale lowers his prize, lets it slide in just right, past the sharp points of Crowley's teeth, over the long flattened length of his tongue, palate slick and pink. He takes it all, mouth stretching open wider when it finds itself not big enough.

There are suddenly sharp fingers in Aziraphale's jacket, scratching and then curling shut in the material, twitching faintly. Aziraphale watches Crowley's mouth flex around fur, open and then drag, open and drag, throat pulling it down and in. His mouth slowly crushes it in, working it deeper down his throat, and inside. The tail slides in last, disappears after the rolling swell in his throat. Crowley takes a shaky breath, then works his jaw until it clicks.

Aziraphale wants to touch him, and it's a warm familiar feeling that he's ignored for so long. But this time he chooses not to. He curls a hand round the back of Crowley's neck, where he's warm, so very warm, and lets the hands in his coat draw him in, until they're leaning against each other.

"Did you enjoy that?" Aziraphale asks quietly, with a little huff of amusement and delight that he can't quite hold in.

Nothing comes out when Crowley opens his mouth but air. There's a nod, a helpless jerk of head.

For the first time after they've eaten together, Crowley looks satisfied.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fine Dining](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21325408) by [FayJay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FayJay/pseuds/FayJay)


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